6. Soap Product Development

Whether you’ve just started a soap making business or have begun to establish your brand and build a customer base, one of the key aspects to consider is the development of your product line.

From creating unique recipes, designing compelling packaging and managing quality control, soap product development will play a pivotal role in the quality and compliance of your soap products.

Our guide to soap product development offers insight into what the process entails, covering recipe inspiration, packaging design, compliance requirements, product testing and more.

Section 1: Creating Unique Recipes

Understanding Ingredients

Nearly every homemade soap will use these basic ingredients for their recipes:

• Butters & oils: You can use either butter or oil as the base for your soap – coconut oil and palm oil are popular, whilst cocoa butter and shea butter are common butters.
• Lye: Sodium Hydroxide is usually the preferred choice, although you can also use Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). Lye is central to the saponification process, which brings all your ingredients together to form the soap.
• Essential oils: You can also use fragrance oils as an alternative – both types of scents are pivotal to creating impactful and memorable soap branding.

Tips for choosing soap recipe ingredients

• Butters & oils: Choose oils that are from vegetable or animal sources as you cannot make soap with petroleum-based oils.
• Lye: Ensure that you use 100% pure lye for your recipes, as anything less would affect the saponification process that is key to making your soap a success.
• Scents: Fragrance oils are man-made (only use skin safe varieties), whilst essential oils are mostly plant-based, so make a choice based on the values of your brand.
• Colours: You can use colours to accent the scent (red for a rose fragrance, green for natural aromas etc.) to complement your soap branding or just to simply make them standout.
• Water: If you use water in your soap recipe, distilled water is the recommended choice. More advanced soap makers may also want to try tea, goat’s milk, coconut milk coffee or even beer.

Inspiration For Unique Recipes

One of the biggest challenges with product development is finding inspiration for new ideas, which can grow your customer base and expand your creativity.

Keep up to date with new trends in the soap making community by joining specialised Facebook groups and online forums.

The likes of TikTok and Instagram are hotbeds for inspiration, with soap makers from around the world sharing their ideas and new creations.

Also engage with your customers and encourage feedback, as this will give you direct insight into the type of products they are interested in.

You can do this via your social media channels by responding to and engaging with your customers.

Experiment with natural ingredients and additives (botanicals, exfoliants etc.) to change things up in your product line.

While it’s important to have a core product line that always generates sales, trying new ingredients not only keeps the soapmaking process interesting and exciting for you, but it can also help your business to grow into completely unexpected areas you’d perhaps never thought of exploring.

Balancing Functionality and Aesthetics

Naturally you want to make soaps that look fantastic and catch the eye of prospective customers.

At the same time, this needs to be balanced with functionality, especially when it comes to promoting skin benefits.

The key here is to plan the recipe with a visual idea of how you want it to look based on the ingredients.

What you put inside the soap should always be the priority, because a good-looking soap that doesn’t do much for the skin won’t be an attractive proposition for customers.

For example, if you want to create more of a lather to help with moisturising, add more butters/oils, or coffee grounds if you want to boost the soap’s exfoliation properties.

Try not to build too much into one soap and let each variety have its own focus (one for moisturising, one for exfoliation etc.) which will also give you more clarity on how you present it in terms of colour and shape.

Recipe Testing and Refinement

Soap testing is not just for safety, but it is also essential for adjusting your recipes to ensure they make the most of its ingredients:

• Lather: To sustain or stabilise soap lather, use 5-10% castor oil in your recipe, or add/increase oils that support lather like shea butter, almond oil or cocoa butter. You could also replace the water with goats’ milk or yoghurt if you want to increase soap conditioning, or add in jojoba oil, argan oil or pumpkin seed oil.
• Hardness: Use a higher percentage of hard oils (that are solid at room temperature) or add 1-5% of beeswax to increase bar hardness. 1-3% of sodium lactate or 0.5-1% of stearic acid can also be effective.
• Scent: This is one of the easiest ways to transform an existing soap recipe. Ensure you do not include more than the maximum usage rate for any essential oil or fragrance oil, which reduces the risk of causing skin irritation. Add no more than 3% of oil to your recipe and add/remove it if you need to enhance or lower the scent impact.

Section 2: Designing Packaging and Branding

The Role of Packaging in Product Appeal

The way you present your soap will make a huge difference to the way people perceive the product and your brand.

Your soaps will be up against a lot of competition, from both large and small businesses, so it's essential that you make a strong first impression.

Great soap branding can also safeguard your products and improve the customer experience, whilst also helping you create an image about your products that go far beyond the soap bars themselves.

Some soap packaging ideas you could try include:

1. Eco-friendly packaging

Even if sustainability isn’t the main focus of your brand, customers are becoming increasingly eco-friendly, so it’s an element you will need to consider.

If you want to use eco-friendly soap packaging, look at alternatives to plastic and invest in biodegradable or reusable materials that can be recycled.

2. Boxes

This is the classic and more traditional way of packaging your soap products.

It ensures your soaps are encased in a sturdy container and there are plenty of eco-friendly options available, so you can create an eye-catching design.

3. Wraps

Kraft paper has become a popular soap packaging option because it complements the natural, rustic feel of soap.

It’s also an accessible and affordable material that helps you to keep packaging costs to a minimum whilst still making a visual impact.

4. Luxury

If your target audience is more affluent, then your soap packaging needs to look the part.

Using black suggests sophistication and communicates a luxury experience, whilst thicker papers and textured materials look more expensive and luxurious.

Foil stamping and embossed labels will also give your products that extra feel of exclusivity.

5. Bags

Using bags for soap packaging can add a sense of charm and sophistication.

Translucent bags will give customers a glimpse of the soap’s texture and colour, while keeping it wrapped up and protected.

Bags made from natural fibres like organic cotton or hemp can also tie into an environmental aesthetic.

Brand Identity Development

When it comes to branding soap packaging, think of it as your calling card – as it will act as a quick introduction to your company and the products you offer:

• To make a fast impression, clear, standout designs with strong colours will go a long way to grabbing the attention of potential customers.
• Soap branding is not only about making the product look good, but it allows you to communicate your brand identity and values through the design.
• By using practical, user-friendly packaging you can enhance the customer experience and increase the chances of getting return business.
• Safety is also important, so the packaging will need to protect the soap, so they look and feel fresh to use once opened.

So, in practical terms, how can you go about branding soap packaging in a way that incorporates the above?

• Colours: Using the right colours can quickly evoke an emotional response in a customer and will help to strike a mood. For example, if you go for pastel colours this can suggest luxury and calmness, while brighter colours convey energy and fun.
• Fonts: Both the font size and style are important, as it should be easy to read whilst also complementing the overall design. And it’s not only the soap logos that are important, as with the right fonts you can highlight key ingredients or selling points for the product.
• Imagery: Another way of branding soap packaging is through clever use of images or graphics. Again, this element will need to complement the overall design, whether it’s illustrations, abstract designs or images related to the product.

Label Design and Compliance

Aside from the overall soap branding, you will also need to focus on the soap label design to ensure that it is both aesthetically pleasing whilst providing the right information.

First, we’ll start with the compliance guidelines your soap label will need to include:

• Product identification which should be the same name as the one used on the safety data sheet.
• Hazard pictograms to highlight mixtures or substances that could pose a health threat to customers.
• Signal words – either ‘Danger’ or ‘Warning’ should be used to indicate the severity of a particular hazard.
• Hazard statements will give the customer a direct warning about what the substance or mixture may do after use, such as causing eye irritation or allergic skin reaction, for example.
• Precautionary statements are also needed to instruct customers how to use the soap bar safely to avoid or minimise exposure to the hazards.
• You will also need to disclose the full name and contact details of your business, so the customer can get in touch, if needed.

Taking the compliance requirements into consideration, try to include the following:

• Identify your product: Clearly label the soap so the customer knows the name of the product and any benefits it may offer.
• Include the ingredients: List all the ingredients used to make the soap using common words, so customers can easily understand what they are buying and using.
• Product history: You may also want to include a little back history of how the product was made, including details of any unique aspects of your process. This not only boosts transparency, but it also helps your soap branding to stand out.
• Materials: The soap label design should be on material that complements the packaging and overall aesthetic of your brand. For example, if you’re going for the natural look, use rustic-style materials for your labels.
• Size and shape: Experiment with the size and shape of your labels to find one that works with your branding. Die cut soap labels can add a unique twist to the label, adding visual appeal and interest for your customers.

Sustainability Considerations

Even if sustainability isn’t the cornerstone of your brand, it is an element that cannot be overlooked completely, as customers are more aware than ever of the environmental impact of their buying choices.

In the soaps and lotions market, customers want to buy into products that look and feel natural and are often attracted to products with ingredients that are taken from natural sources.

Using eco-friendly soap packaging can add to that appeal, offering further proof of your brand’s mission and commitment to the environment.

Emphasising your sustainability also gives your brand a unique selling point, which you can utilise in your marketing and promotional campaigns.

Section 3: Testing and Quality Control

Importance of Testing

Trust is probably the most important element of any transaction, and when it comes to soapmaking it’s particularly important because of how intimate and personal a bar of soap can be to an individual.

Customers want to know that the bar of soap is safe to use and won’t cause them any harm, and implementing testing and quality control checks into your soap making process will go a long way to allaying those types of concerns.

Types of Tests

• pH testing: By testing the pH balance of your soap, you will get an idea of how much alkaline is present and its suitability for use on skin. If it is abnormally high (it should be between 8 and 10) then you will need to neutralise or keep cooking the soap until the alkaline level drops.
• User testing: Once you are sure the product is safe to use, testing homemade soap with friends and family is a good way of getting some real-world feedback. Ask them to rate the lather, fragrance strength, soap size, texture and soap, colour, packaging. Find out what they enjoy about the soap and why, as well as any things they did not like.

Quality Control Best Practices

The sooner you can establish a routine for testing the pH balance of your soap and other quality control checks, the easier it will be to identify potential issues and make the necessary changes.

This can include things like consulting a safety data sheet for every ingredient you use and ensuring you use accurate measurements (scales may need to be recalibrated after a while).

It’s also helpful to document your results so you have a clear record of the entire process from start to finish.

You can use this information to make necessary adjustments and tweaks where needed.

Scaling Up

As your business starts to grow, so too will the size of your batches.

To ensure you can maintain quality levels as you transition from smaller to larger production scales, try to follow these quality measures:

• Place an emphasis on the handcrafted nature of your soaps, as this is what attracted customers to your brand in the first place and is what makes them unique.
• Try to expand gradually and do not take on too much too soon, as it could compromise the quality of your products.
• Look for ways to streamline your production process without losing quality. This could be things like making small adjustments to your process or improving time management.
• Keep track of your inventory so you can minimise wastage and overproduction. Look for software or apps that can track both finished products and raw materials.
• Maintain customer feedback to keep track of how your soaps are performing and if there are any issues that need to be ironed out during the production stage.

Conclusion

It may seem like there is a lot of information to take in when it comes to soap product development, but you’ll soon discover how naturally it becomes part of your process.

Look for ingredients that not only complement your branding and brand values but that also give you a unique selling point.

This extends into your soap packaging, including the soap labels, which will not only have to meet regulatory requirements but should also be informative and capture the imagination of potential customers.

And the more rigorous you can be with your testing, the higher quality soaps you will make and the safer your customers will be.